I Love this!

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2ESNzM/www.ted.com/talks/courtney_martin_reinventing_feminism.html

A Work of Artifice - Marge Piercy

The bonsai tree

in the attractive pot

could have grown eighty feet tall

on the side of a mountain

till split by lightning.

But a gardener

carefully pruned it.

It is nine inches high.

Every day as he

whittles back the branches

the gardener croons,

it is your nature

to be small and cozy,

domestic and weak;

how lucky, little tree,

to have a pot to grow in.

With living creatures

one must begin very early

to dwarf their growth:

the bound feet,

the crippled brain,

the hair in curlers,

the hands you

love to touch.

Body Image

Ugh.  This is one that probably everyone deals with. 

Body image is something I have always struggled with.  Having a child (especially a daughter) is difficult in this respect, because I am trying my best not to pass these problems on to her.

I realized a few years ago that the way I feel about my body now, as a size 14, is probably the same or even better than the way that I felt about it when I was a size 6.  Why is that?  If I was smaller before then, according to our cultural standards, I should have been happier, right?  I realized what many of you probably have.  My body image is not actually tied in any way to my body.  I am told that no matter what - I must feel dissatisfied with who I am – and so I am.

In reality, although I am ‘overweight’, I am probably in better physical shape than I have been most of my life.  I try to eat more ‘whole foods’ and less fast food, many health problems have become managed and my asthma is to the point where I can actually walk a several flights of stairs without being winded.  Despite knowing this, weight is still something that affects so many decisions that I make.  Where I sit, what I say, who I talk to, how I act.  Why do we let this permeate so much of our existence?

Despite making a conscious effort, I know that I am not always good about the way I speak around my daughter.  We try to never talk about people dieting or losing weight and instead talk about making healthy choices in our food and activities.  But I know she will pick this crap up.  We are so saturated in body image that even if you avoid traditional mediums you can never fully avoid the reach of advertising and peers.

An amazing article I read about this is, “The Body Politic”, by Abra Fortune Chernik.  In it she talks about a health store clerk telling her she was the healthiest person of the week because of her low BMI, all the while she was close to dying because of anorexia.

Some statistics about weight and eating disorders: (Statistics from the chapter entitled,“Hunger”,from The Beauty Myth, by Naomi Wolf)

-          Half the women on college campuses suffer at some point from an eating disorder.

-          Babies have shown stunted growth by mothers underfeeding them

o   In the U.S., 99% of boys are breastfed, but only 66% of girls and girls were given 50% less time to feed.

-          Studies show that women may live longer and be generally healthier if they weighed 10-15% more than life insurance figures suggest and they refrain from dieting

-          When poor health is correlated to fatness in women, it is due to chronic dieting and the stress of self-hatred, not their weight.

-          A study by J. Polivy and C.P. Herman found that prolonged and periodic caloric restriction resulted in a distinctive personality whose traits are – “passivity, anxiety and emotionality’

Instead of women focusing on doing what is healthiest in both food and exercise, we have decided to focus on the unhealthy obsession of fitting into a certain size standard.  How do we keep from passing this on to the next generation?

Dealing with Dragons

I was reading the current issue of Ms. magazine last month and was really excited about the cover article on ‘Click Lit’.  It surveyed several books that are feminist in nature, most were for tweens and teens.  This is something I constantly am looking for, there is so much great literature out there but often it is problematic from a feminist perspective.  Most of the books in the article are a little old for my daughter, but I did run out and buy, "Dealing with Dragons" , by Patricia C. Wrede.  It is excellent!  The story is so compelling and the main character has really great qualities.  One of my favorite parts explained the roles of Kings and Queens in the dragon’s world and how they were different roles that either gender could fill rather than tied to a specific gender. 

The only thing I found difficult is how the book highlighted the fact that this princess was different.  I appreciate what the author is trying to do and that most people are so steeped in the princess culture that this is a necessary occurrence.  However, I would like to see more literature that presents people (including princesses) behaving any way they would like.

I believe this is a predicament that ties closely to Dr. Sandra Lipsitz Bem’s essay, “Feminist Child-Rearing” (sorry, I couldn’t find a link for it).  In this writing she explains the way that she raised her children gender-neutrally so literature was difficult to find.  As a result of that she didn’t give them traditional feminist children’s literature like, “William’s Doll’, because it would highlight the fact for her children that some people thought it inappropriate for William to have a doll.

While I think it is good for Jane to understand that those views are out there and learn how to address them, I also don’t want her to feel that she and any one like her has to fight a constant battle to be who they are.